Recently, as personal information/communication terminals have been popularized, semiconductor devices have been developed increasingly as electronic components related to such terminals. Additionally, development for a method for manufacturing a more compact and precise semiconductor device has been accelerated.
The semiconductor device is also referred to as a “chip scale package,” which is a “die” (a die having a circuit formed thereon, separated from a silicon wafer) packaged with an insulation material. In the present disclosure, a “die” means a “semiconductor die.”
A general process for manufacturing a semiconductor device includes a step of fabricating a wafer, a step of processing the wafer and a step of packaging the wafer. If necessary, after a circuit pattern is formed on one surface 10a of the wafer by way of the wafer processing step, a grinding step may be performed in order to reduce the thickness of the semiconductor device. In the grinding step, the back surface 10b of the wafer 10, which has no circuit pattern, is removed by a grinder 20, as shown in FIG. 1a. 
At this time, a tape 14 for back grinding is generally attached to the wafer surface 10a having the circuit pattern in order to protect the circuit pattern.
After the tape 14 for back grinding is removed from the top surface 10a of the wafer having the circuit pattern formed thereon, a dicing tape 15 is attached to the back surface 10b of the wafer 10. Then, as shown in FIGS. 1c and 1d, the wafer 10 is subjected to a dicing process for cutting the wafer, so that several hundreds of dies 13 can be obtained from one wafer 10.
Meanwhile, as shown in FIG. 1e, a strip line 19 is formed between a die and another die at a predetermined interval of about 100 μm when fabricating the wafer 10, so that the wafer is cut by a blade along the strip line 19 during the dicing process.
Additionally, during the dicing process for cutting the strip line 19, the blade 30 is selected according to the hardness, softness and wear resistance of the wafer 10 and characteristics of the semiconductor device. Further, the dicing tape 15 is attached to the wafer in order to prevent an individually separated die 13 from flying by the impact caused by the cutting work.
The aforementioned dicing tape 15 is removed from the back surface 10b of the wafer by irradiating UV rays thereto to cure the adhesive layer of the tape and to reduce the adhesion value of the tape. After removing the dicing tape 15, dies can be individually picked up and mounted onto a printed circuit board. Then, the die is connected electrically to the printed circuit board by way of wire bonding, and the resultant structure is packaged to provide a finished semiconductor device having desired characteristics.
However, as a thin and compact semiconductor device is required, the thickness of a wafer has increased. In addition, a diameter of a wafer has increased to increase the number of die or semiconductor device produced from the wafer for the cost savings in fabrication and improvement of the productivity. To this end, a thin and wide wafer has been used for the dicing process using a blade. However, such a wafer may be broken or cracked by the mechanical impact caused by the blade.
To solve the aforementioned problem, it has been suggested that cutting by a blade is performed at a lower rate but instead more deeply during the dicing process. However, in this case, an increased amount of silicon dust is generated on the cut surface of the wafer.
Such silicon dust 18 includes nickel, diamond dust, alloy and other residue generated from the blade. The silicon dust flies during the blade cutting process, and then sticks onto the bonding pad 11 of the die, as shown in FIG. 1f. 
Meanwhile, it is inevitable that the bonding pad 11 of the die is designed to have a small area because I/O number should be increased in order to increase the integration degree of logic elements on a smaller die. Thus, if the silicon dust 18 sticks onto the die having a small area, it is difficult to ensure the bonding reliability in the subsequent wire bonding process.
For example, even when Au wires are bonded to a bonding pad formed of Al while the silicon dust 18 remains on the bonding pad having a small area, because intermetallic compound (AuAl2) between two the metals is not formed efficiently, it is not possible to perform the bonding smoothly, resulting in degradation in the bonding strength and in an increase in the electric resistance. Therefore, when the resultant semiconductor device is subjected to temperature stress, bond wire opening may occur or the semiconductor device may be deteriorated.
To solve the aforementioned problem, it has been suggested that deionized (DI) water mixed with carbon dioxide (CO2) gas is sprayed onto the wafer to remove the silicon dust from the wafer. However, in this case, the carbon dioxide gas added to increase the cleaning power may react with the metal of the bonding pad 11, resulting in corrosion of the bonding pad 11.
Also, such corrosion of the bonding pad degrades the wire bonding quality during the subsequent wire bonding process, resulting in degradation in the electrical reliability of the semiconductor device.